Lessons from Robodebt: government incompetence is devastating

Former prime minister Scott Morrison with his former minister Stuart Robert.

The nation and individual states have had no shortage of costly and destructive administrative failures in recent decades. Few match the incompetence and damage to citizens of the Coalition’s Robodebt scheme. Four Labor ministers announced on Monday that the Albanese government had agreed in principle to all 56 of the recommendations made by its royal commission into the failed automated debt recovery program. In her 990-page report released in July, royal commissioner Catherine Holmes said the evidence, which was drawn from 100 witnesses across 46 days, suggested “elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office appear to exist”.

Where that leads for senior bureaucrats and former Coalition ministers with responsibility for running and overseeing the scheme will emerge following due processes. Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher said 16 investigations of bureaucrats and former bureaucrats who were identified in the royal commission’s report are under way by the Australian Public Service Commission. Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said former Coalition ministers who oversaw the scheme, which was found to be illegal as well as cruel and crude, could face a civil case against them. Jennifer Miller and Kath Madgwick, the mothers of two Robodebt victims who took their own lives, were still “considering civil action”, Mr Shorten said.

There is nothing wrong with governments making efforts to ensure that those receiving benefits provided by taxpayers are entitled to them. We do not agree with Ms Holmes that politicians should “lead a change in social attitudes to people receiving welfare payments”. Welfare is a stopgap measure for those in real need, to be overseen carefully to minimise the burden on taxpayers. Encouraging welfare recipients to work, especially when the labour market is buoyant as it is at present, is vital.

But that is no justification for the bureaucratic bullying and botch-ups. The process needs to be fair and competent. Robodebt was none of that. Based on an automated income averaging system, it wrongfully recovered $750m from 380,000 ­people. Income averaging, Ms Holmes found, was “a patently unreliable methodology”, without other evidence, to determine entitlement to benefit. “In December 2016 and January 2017 the media, traditional and social, were saturated with articles about people who had had demonstrably wrong debts raised against them, and in many instances heard of it first when contacted by debt collectors,” she wrote in her report. “The human impacts of Robodebt were being reported: families struggling to make ends meet receiving a debt notice at Christmas, young people being driven to despair by demands for payment.” Authorities were warned in December 2016 about the unfairness of the scheme by bodies such as the Australian Council of Social Service. ACOSS pointed out that inaccuracies were being produced by averaging instead of applying actual fortnightly income figures. It also pointed out the unfairness of charging penalties when it was not established that recipients had even been contacted.

The Albanese government’s ambition to ensure such errors cannot be repeated is commendable. The Coalition, too, must learn the lessons and commit itself to excellence in public administration. Mr Shorten has announced that the government will spend $228m on 3000 extra Centrelink and Medicare staff to deliver better outcomes. If well deployed, they should help. But their effectiveness will depend on good processes being followed and overseen.